


nothing is a sure thing, shouyou

by onceandforall



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Body Horror, Ghosts, M/M, Memory Loss, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:22:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandforall/pseuds/onceandforall
Summary: And then: he’s here. Kenma smiles, a small thing.Shouyou smiles back.At the end of it all, a new beginning.adventures of ghost shouyou and witch kenma
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42





	nothing is a sure thing, shouyou

**Author's Note:**

> please be aware of the tags :) 
> 
> title of this fic is from this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2TJwkNNA6Y)
> 
> happy halloween!

It’s late at night. Kenma has felt his presence throughout the night, growing stronger and stronger with each passing minute.

And then: he’s here.

At the end of it all, it worked.

“Who… who are you?”

Kenma approaches him slowly. Shouyou’s ghost is shy, backing away like a wounded animal. But Kenma is not going to hurt him. Not anymore. “I’m Kenma. You’re Shouyou.”

“Shouyou… Do I know you? I feel like I know you.”

Kenma smiles, a small thing.

Shouyou smiles back.

At the end of it all, a new beginning.

~

The day is a quiet one. In Kenma's life, most of the days are quiet. Filled with a sense of completion of a simple job well done. Filled with a sense of warmth, like a cup of warm tea on a stormy night. Kenma likes his quiet life.

But while Kenma might like his quiet life, filled with gentle lulls of magic, there is one thing in Kenma's life that is far from quiet: Shouyou.

Shouyou is a ball of energy, always running at high speed until he wears himself down. But he never really wears himself down. He just acts like he does.

Shouyou never tires, one of the perks of being a ghost. He often runs circles around Kenma, knowing all the buttons to press that make Kenma shake his head and smile. But while Shouyou might be the purest form of energy one could ever get, he's soft. There are no hard edges with him. Gentle almost. He's energetic in a way that isn't taxing on Kenma. They could spend hours together, and neither of them would ever tire of the other.

They’ve done it plenty of times before.

And that's what they do on this quiet day, spend hours together. Kenma wakes up to rain. Kenma doesn't like the rain because he hates the feeling of being wet. It drags him down, gets all over his shoes. The feeling of wetness reminds him of slime, of slick blood, of using too much grease. Shouyou doesn't like the rain because it passes right through him and he says the feeling is uncomfortable at best, tortuous at worst.

They don't have anything to do today, Kenma has made sure of that. There are no dire tasks that cannot be pushed to tomorrow, when the sun should be shining, the rain clouds long gone. So an hour after waking up and meandering around the house, Kenma and Shouyou get back into bed.

Shouyou is cold. Ghosts are always cold. But when their limbs are entangled, and Kenma is on the verge of dipping into sleep, there's a warmth in Kenma's chest that can't ever, ever be replaced with anything else.

Kenma sleeps.

And Shouyou... Well, Shouyou does whatever ghosts do when humans are asleep. Kenma doesn't really know about that.

~

Supermarkets are one of Kenma's least favorite places in the world, coming in right behind crowded rush hour trains. Kenma would do one of those delivery options, where he puts his order in online and stands outside the store waiting for the minimum wage worker to walk his bags outside, but he doesn't trust other people with his food. And he certainly doesn't trust other witches with his ingredients.

He hasn't been practicing for a little over six months, but that doesn't mean he's dropped magic all together. Being a witch is more than being in a coven and working on new potions and pushing yourself to your magical limits. It's living with magic inside of you, knowing how to care for it and letting it grow, cutting off the old parts and allowing for new growth. Just because he's not as active as he once was, doesn't mean that he's not a witch anymore.

And Kenma is particular with his ingredients, which means he has to be the one to go to the store and buy them. And Shouyou tags along as well, as he always does. They're a unit.

Besides, even though Shouyou can't taste anything let alone digest food, he enjoys shopping.

Kenma pushes the small shopping cart down the aisle, eyes scanning for the particular brand of apple cider vinegar that he prefers to buy. He's been through all of it, and there's one brand that works much better than anything else. He always forgets the name, though, and has to remember it by the label.

"Can we get cereal?" Shouyou asks. He's weaving in and out of the aisles, avoiding running into people. Kenma once asked him about it, why he was okay with going through objects but not through people. It's not like either of them can see him. (Objects have no visual sense, obviously. And the majority of the people in this world don’t have the ability to see ghosts. Kenma has never met another person that could see Shouyou.) Shouyou had just shrugged and muttered something about it feeling off, feeling wrong when he floated through people. He had a slight frown on his face, barely noticeable, but Kenma had spent so long memorizing how all the emotions displayed themself on Shouyou's face that he knew to leave it alone.

Kenma scrunches his nose together. He doesn't like cereal. “You don’t even eat it. I will have to eat it or throw it away.”

Shouyou leans into Kenma’s space, solid and cold. His breath blooms across Kenma’s face. “Please. I love cereal.”

Kenma huffs and rolls his eyes. Shouyou knows he has won because he leans back and smiles. “Fine,” Kenma replies. It’s so hard to say no to Shouyou, so Kenma doesn’t often do it. “Go find what types of cereal there is. I’ll meet you there.”

Shouyou’s smile grows wider. He bounces in place. “Great. I’ll meet you there too.” And then Shouyou gives Kenma a wink and is gone. Most of the time, Shouyou isn’t actually corporeal. But he likes having Kenma see him.

Kenma sighs and looks at the grocery list in his hand. At the very bottom, scrawled in his chicken scratch of writing is a small _cereal for Shouyou_. Even his past self knew exactly what he was walking into when he agreed to let Shouyou come to the grocery store with him.

Other than the cereal, there are some basics, that if he recalls correctly, are at the end of this aisle. Kenma has been to this one specific store so many times that he knows the layout like the back of his hand. But sometimes, the workers like to change the layout a bit. Just to keep frequent shoppers like Kenma on their toes.

It’s annoying.

Kenma begins pushing the cart. He looks up and freezes. There are two people at the end of the aisle who weren’t there a moment ago. Kenma quickly looks behind himself, looking for an exit. There are too many people in the aisle for him to make it out without being noticed. He’s going to have to go forward and hope they don’t see him. Over the years, Kenma has gotten much better at dealing with unpredicted social interaction. But sometimes, especially when it’s with people that he does not want to see, it becomes super hard to even just nod his head in their direction.

He sneaks past them, but then his cart gives out the loudest squeak it could possibly let out, and the two people turn their head and look right at Kenma.

“Oh,” Sugawara says. He has his gray hair tucked mostly into a red beanie. The apples of his cheeks are red from the cold. He probably just got inside. “Kozume. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Kenma can feel his body start to fold into himself, trying to take up the least amount of space as possible. But there’s a small voice in the back of his head that sounds remarkably like Shouyou that reminds him that he has nothing to be afraid of. That Sugawara is a nice person. That this is just a normal social interaction.

“Needed groceries.” Kenma pushes his empty basket forward a bit, to emphasize the grocery-ness of his trip.

Sugawara nods. He swallows and all of a sudden he looks sad, two seconds away from bursting into tears. But then he swallows again and all that sadness is locked away behind a neutral face. Kenma could never get a good read on Sugawara. “I’m so sorry. About what happened to H—”

The other person that Sugawara is with clears his throat. It’s Sawamura. Sawamura, in all of his square face and broad shoulder-ness. He has a scarf hanging around his neck, a limp piece of fabric that probably isn’t thick enough to protect himself from the cold. Sawamura is a sensible person, but some of his fashion choices are questionable to say the least. Kenma hasn’t seen either of them in a long time. He’s had no reason to. “We just wanted to say we’re sorry. About everything.”

Sugawara swallows again. Kenma thinks that he’s swallowing way too much. “We knew how close you were.”

Kenma nods. “Thanks.”

Sugawara beings to ask, “Are you—”

But Sawamura clears his throat again and whispers _Leave the poor kid alone_. He doesn’t do a good job at whispering, but Kenma isn’t going to be the one to tell him that. Sawamura grabs onto Sugawara’s arm and grips it tight. “Have a good night, Kozume.”

Sugawara’s mouth opens and closes, wanting to say something but taking it back at the last second. He ends up nodding his head, telling Kenma goodbye, and letting himself get walked away by Sawamura.

They leave the aisle. Kenma gives himself ten seconds to breathe in and out, steady himself. After the ten seconds pass, he looks back down at his grocery list. His hands are shaking.

He starts moving. He has to meet Shouyou in the cereal aisle.

~

Kenma has been to the park more in his adult life than he has ever been as a kid. When he was growing up, the park was a scary place, filled with too tough and too loud kids. Kids at the park never liked to play nice, especially to Kenma who was too small for his own good and would rather be inside playing with one of his video games.

The park got a bit better when he met some of his best friends. His friends would act as a buffer between Kenma and the world around him. Allowing Kenma some leeway in the plane of existence. But Kenma still never liked the park.

But with Shouyou? Kenma would gladly go to the park with Shouyou whenever he asked to. Even at odd hours.

It’s midnight. Kenma has found that time has little meaning to him anymore. There are just times when Kenma is with Shouyou and times that he is not with Shouyou. It’s the best way of telling time that Kenma has yet to come up with.

It’s cold out, but only Kenma has the clothes on to prove it. His hair is smooshed inside a beanie that pulled all the way over his eyebrows. He has a blue scarf wrapped around the bottom half of his face, and two jackets underneath his down coat. Even his hands are covered in mittens. Yet he’s still cold.

But he doesn’t feel as cold as he knows he should be. He just spent the last five minutes running (Running!) around the desolate park, chasing Shouyou down and giggling the entire way. It finally ended when Shouyou pretended to trip and allowed Kenma to finally catch up with him.

Now, the two of them are sitting in the swings, not swinging. Instead they’re holding hands, gently swinging their feet to a silent beat. Shouyou isn’t dressed for the cold. But he’s never dressed properly for the weather. He doesn’t have to be. His ghost form doesn’t feel temperature. There are no bodily functions that react to the outside world. There is just Shouyou in his beat up sneakers, his plain t-shirt and shorts. His hairstyle can change, sometimes, if he really puts his mind up to it. But it will always fall back into the easily rugged look that Kenma is most used to seeing him in.

Now that Kenma isn’t running anymore, the sweat rapidly cooling on his skin, Kenma is starting to feel cold. Not much, but enough for his body to give an involuntary shiver that Shouyou immediately picks up on.

Shouyou squeezes Kenma’s hand. He pulls on Kenma until their swings are close enough for them to put their heads together. Shouyou’s breath is cold and Kenma shivers again.

“If you’re cold we can go home,” Shouyou offers. He smiles and there’s a huge spark of warmth that blooms into a roaring fire in his chest. Kenma isn’t cold anymore. Sometimes, Kenma’s affection for Shouyou is so great that Kenma feels as if he is going to explode with it.

Kenma thinks that this is what love is. He never wants to stop feeling it.

Kenma smiles, a small thing. “I’m good. Really, I’m okay.”

Shouyou sticks out his tongue. “You’re lying. I can tell.”

“I’m not lying.” Kenma rolls his eyes. “I like being out here with you.”

Shouyou smiles again. His smile stretches out to the edge of his face and Kenma is reminded of a beach, a sunset, a smile that Kenma would chase to the end of the world, and warm skin that was never his to touch. Kenma quickly pushes the thought away.

“I love you,” Kenma says. His words are more a whisper, hidden in the puff of fog his breath forms.

But Shouyou hears him anyway. That’s always how they have been: wherever Kenma is, Shouyou is willing to meet him halfway. “I love you too,” Shouyou says.

They both lean into each other. Their kiss is cold and sweet, much like the night air.

~

Kenma can’t sleep. He’s had this problem for years, but most of the time he’s able to stare at the ceiling until he eventually passes out. But tonight is one of those nights where even though Kenma’s body is sinking into the bed, begging for the tiniest sliver of sleep, his mind won’t turn off.

He’s not even thinking of anything. All his mind is a broken TV, filled yet empty with the meaningless static.

After two hours of chasing sleep and not getting any closer to it than before, Kenma rolls himself out of bed. He finds Shouyou in the kitchen. At some point in the night, Shouyou was doing a puzzle. The outline of the puzzle is laying on the kitchen table, almost complete. He’s only missing one edge piece.

But Shouyou isn’t concentrated on the puzzle. He’s staring out into space, his expression blank. Kenma waves a hand in front of his face and when he doesn’t respond, Kenma sits down on the other side of the table and starts to work on the puzzle himself.

By the time that Shouyu comes to, Kenma’s found the missing edge piece and is working on grouping the rest of the pieces by their color.

“Kenma?” Shouyou croaks out. His voice sounds as if he just woke up, which isn’t true. Ghosts can’t sleep, but they can replicate human behavior. “I thought you were asleep.”

Kenma shrugs. He drags a pink piece into its pile. “I couldn’t sleep. And you zoned out.”

“Oh.” Shouyou rubs the back of his head, awkward. “I haven’t zoned out in a while.”

Kenma nods. Kenma doesn’t know if that’s true or not, but he does know that Shouyou hates zoning out. He hates not being present. Kenma doesn’t know what triggers it or what it feels like.

A moment passes, then two, and Kenma looks up because he thinks Shouyou is going to say something, elaborate. But all Shouyou does is turn his attention to the puzzle. The two of them work together but separate.

Minutes pass. Time slips around Kenma in indescribable patterns. All he knows is gently pressing puzzle pieces into each other and the small bubble of triumph that comes when they link together.

Then Shouyou says: “Do you think I will ever remember?”

They’ve had this conversation before. It breaks Kenma’s heart every time. Shouyou doesn’t remember any of his life before he became a ghost. All he knows is that Kenma was there and Kenma is the one that’s stayed with him, that’s loved him, that’s given him a home, that’s given him a new life in death.

“Is this not enough?” Kenma bites. He doesn’t mean to be snippy, but Kenma has still had no sleep and Shouyou is asking a question that he already knows the answer to. All it does is make Kenma feel guilty.

  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

But Kenma’s words have already sunk in. Shouyou is frozen, unmoving with the shock of Kenma’s unexpected anger. Kenma apologizes again and this time Shouyou relaxes.

“No, of course not.” Shouyou reaches across the table and holds Kenma’s hand in his own. “Of course not. I love you. This is enough. This is always going to be enough. I— just—-” He trails off, but Kenma knows how his sentence is supposed to end.

Kenma nods. “I wish I could help you remember.”

Shouyou presses his lips into a hard line. Usually, Shouyou is all teeth, all smiles. It breaks Kenma’s heart to see him in such a stark opposite way. Shouyou nods and then lets go of Kenma’s hand. They both go back to the puzzle, but the pensive, quiet mood of the early morning hour has dissipated.

Kenma finds the place for one more piece then goes back to bed.

He still doesn’t sleep.

~

Kenma knows he’s being followed. The same person has been on his tail since he left the subway station. He didn’t notice it at first. It was a big transfer station and so many people walked the exact same way. But there was burning in the back of Kenma’s head that told him something was off. So he went through a few side streets, down two roads that he never travels on, and the person had left him for a few moments, but always ended up finding him.

Kenma quickly goes through what he needs to do: he’s a smart witch with good magic and a head that quickly works through all the scenarios. He could probably take them on if it came to it. But if there were just after something simple, like his wallet, then Kenma would just give it away and keep walking.

But Kenma knows that they’re not after his money. If they were, they would’ve done something about it already.

Kenma turns a corner.

The person that’s following him turns the same corner.

Kenma sharply turns on his heel, hands outstretched and a curse on his lips. He gets halfway through the curse— which even when halfway done is strong enough to lift his purserer a few inches off the ground— when an arm wraps around his throat and squeezes.

Kenma chokes, the rest of the curse sputtering out of his mouth. Kenma struggles against the restraint, but all it does is make the second person hold onto him tighter until Kenma starts seeing stars.

Right before Kenma passes out, he’s let go. He stumbles to the ground, heaving. His hands scratch against sharp rocks and broken glass. Kenma’s too lightheaded to think, but he turns his head and looks at his two pursuers to at least be able to get their faces in his mind.

Curses can work remotely, too, as long as you know the face of who you are meant to curse.

But Kenma doesn’t see menacing strangers, after something that Kenma can’t give them. He sees strangers, but ones that have become forcibly so. In another world, seeing these two people would bring Kenma comfort. But all it does now is remind Kenma of the haunting smell of iron and the dark way flesh burns.

Kenma pukes.

“We just want to talk,” Yaku says once Kenma is finished throwing up. Yaku was the one that was following Kenma. The red hoodie over his head blocked Kenma from seeing his hair or his face. But now that he’s looking at him, Kenma realizes that Yaku wasn’t even trying to disguise himself. He doesn’t even have a glamor on.

“Kind of rude to never talk to your friends again,” Kuroo says. His black hair is down, not in its usual gelled style. It’s longer too, the longest Kenma has ever seen it. And that’s saying something, considering they’ve grown up together. Kuroo has his arms crossed over his chest as if he didn’t just almost strangle Kenma into unconsciousness.

Kenma stands up, shaking. Neither of them offer him any help. They don’t have that type of relationship anymore. “Was ambushing me the best way to talk to me? Choking me?”

Yaku sighs, which was much nicer of a reaction than Kenma was expecting. “Yes. Don’t you think we’ve tried everything else?”

“If I didn’t do that you would have had Yaku killed,” Kuroo says, voice flat. “I know how powerful you are, Kenma. Stop kidding yourself.”

He has a point, but Kenma isn’t going to tell him that.

“Come back to work,” Kuroo says after a moment. “We miss you.”

Kenma doesn’t want to go back to work. Work is… hard. He doesn’t have the mindset to be able to go back to work. They both should know this.

“We know it’s hard,” Yaku says, the damn mind reader that he is. He doesn’t even try to act coy about it either, sending Kenma a sharp grin. “It’s hard for us too, dammit. Do you ever think about what you did to us?”

No, Kenma thinks. If Yaku is going to read his mind anyway, he might as well be honest about it. Kenma never thinks about them anymore. He has no reason to. They don’t mean anything to him.

“Fuck you,” Yaku says. He turns to Kuroo. “I’m done here. I’ll be waiting for whenever you're ready to leave.” Yaku storms off. Kenma and Kuroo both watch him leave.

Kenma sighs in relief. For as long as Kenma has known Yaku, Yaku puts him on edge. There isn’t the same type of familiarity between Kuroo and Kenma as there once was, but it’s better than the serrated tension between Yaku and Kenma.

“I have nightmares,” Kuroo states. He isn’t looking at Kenma. He’s looking everywhere but at Kenma. As if Kenma is a grotesque image that’s not made for human consumption. Kenma understands. He can’t look in a mirror sometimes. “Not so much anymore, but I did. For a long time.”

Kenma nods. “Me too.”

“What did you get out of it?” Kuroo asks. He’s looking at the ground beneath Kenma’s feet now, his bottom lip worried between his teeth. “Nothing?”

“Something.” He doesn’t elaborate.

They stare each other down. Kenma is not going to be the one to break first.

Kuroo nods. “Well, you’re not going to get in trouble. There’s not even an active investigation. Just…” He trails off. His eyes work their way up Kenma’s body. Kenma feels his gaze like a hot iron, burning everything in its path. Finally, Kuroo is looking directly at him and Kenma is on fire. It’s not a good fire, the type of warmth that he feels when he’s with Shouyou. No, this one is pure flame, just corrosive and damaging. “Think about coming back to work.”

Kenma closes his eyes. Without his eyes open, he doesn’t feel the burn as much. But it’s still there until Kuroo eventually drops his gaze. “I’ll think about it.”

Kuroo breaks out into a smile, but it stays right on his mouth, never reaching his eyes. “That’s all I ask.”

“Okay.”

Kuroo leaves after that. Kenma walks around the alley for a few minutes, giving Kuroo and Yaku enough time to truly be gone. He’s careful as he walks the rest of the way home, making sure that no one is following him.

No one does and when Kenma finally gets into his apartment, he closes the door, puts his back against it, and slides all the way down to the ground. He’s crying before he hits the ground. Then Shouyou is there, lovely, caring Shouyou, to hold him as he cries.

When Shouyou asks if he’s okay, Kenma is crying too hard to respond.

And all that does is make Shouyou hold onto him tighter.

~

Kenma likes the feel of dirt. It’s earthy, gritty, and solid. Kenma feels productive when he works with the dirt. The community garden isn’t a place that Kenma has made a habit of coming to. But when he’s here, it’s satisfying. Working with your hands is satisfying. Productive.

Shouyou is working next to him. It’s still early in the morning: Kenma isn’t an early riser, but the garden is always best early in the morning. No one trickles in until later in the morning, when the sun is shining and the morning dew layer has burnt off. So for now, they get a few moments of privacy. Just Kenma, Shouyou, and the dirt.

Kenma takes a quick look at Shouyou. Most days, Shouyou is more solid than he is not. Today is most days. If he squints, Kenma can almost see the sweat balling on his forehead and running down the side of his face. The sun hits Shouyou and instead of going through him, it reflects off of him. And Kenma sees Shouyou as he once was: beautiful with his easy smile, beautiful with his big brown, expressive eyes, beautiful with his orange hair as vivid as the sunshine. His cheeks are flushed, the red on the apples of his cheeks. He’s warm too, runs hotter than Kenma ever dreams of. Holding his hand is hand is like fi—

“Hey,” Shouyou says. He has his face inches away from Kenma’s. Kenma hadn’t even noticed, but he notices _now_ and jolts back, almost falling over.

He catches himself before he falls.

“You have some dirt—,” Shouyou says, his tongue in between his lips, “—on your face.” He leans over, hand gently reaching out to Kenma’s face. He rubs on Kenma’s nose. His fingers are ice but Kenma doesn’t shiver. Satisfied with his job, Shouyou smiles and leans back. “There, all better.”

Kenma blushes and he isn’t even sure why. Is he flustered? Is he embarrassed? At what? “Thanks,” Kenma manages to say, voice soft.

Shouyou looks at him. Looks through him. Kenma feels seen, naked. But then Shouyou’s glance changes and then his look is soft, concerned. “You okay?”

Kenma nods. “Kiss me.”

And so Shouyou does. He tastes like dirt.

~

Kuroo and Yaku call him and call him. After the alley incident, he unblocked their numbers. It feels only fair to do so. Their calls finally wear him down and Kenma gets back to work.

Work is fine.

Work is _fine._

Work is. Fine.

He hasn’t been to work in a long time. His hands and his body aren’t used to spending hours testing new potions, being around so many people who require so much attention. The entire shop is alight with his presence, asking him questions about where he has been, what he has been doing, how he’s been because they heard about what happened and how hiking is just so much more dangerous than one would think and they can’t imagine how he must be feeling.

Kenma doesn’t have answers for them. He just nods his head, tries to smile, and retreats into the back room. But even in the back room, the ingredients stare at him as if he’s an intruder. Kenma can’t find any peace.

The only good thing is when the rest of the workers are shooed off by Kuroo. Kenma can understand their interrogation, though. If someone he knew randomly dropped off the edge of the world and then reappeared months later, Kenma would also be curious. But the thing is, what Kenma did was never random. It was planned, methodically, and if only they were looking for it, they would have found it.

His half day shift drags on until it’s lunch time and Kuroo shoves a sandwich into his hand and tells him to go home. Yaku is working at the front desk when Kenma passes through. Neither of them look at each other and judging from Yaku’s blank expression, he’s not reading Kenma’s mind either.

Kenma eats the sandwich as he walks home. He walks because he needs some time to compose himself. He knows that going back to work is supposed to be a good thing. A sense of normalcy. But work is draining and by the time that Kenma gets home, he wants nothing more than to take a shower hot enough to burn and to lay in bed.

Shouyou is a ball of pure energy as soon as Kenma opens the door. He peppers Kenma with questions about his day and Kenma surprises himself when he answers them. There is something about Shouyou that makes Kenma relax, feel more himself. Shouyou’s energy doesn’t tear down Kenma. Instead, it energizes him.

After a few minutes of questions headed Kenma’s way, Kenma asks Shouyou what he did today. They’re laying on the couch now, Shouyou on top of Kenma, their faces on each other’s shoulders. They’re so intertwined that Kenma can tell the exact moment that Shouyou freezes.

Kenma runs his hand through Shouyou’s hair. Kenma doesn’t know how physical touch feels to Shouyou. But it’s something that Shouyou has always loved.

“I can’t remember,” Shouyou admits, his voice a whisper right into Kenma’s ear. “I don’t think I did anything. I mean, I did _something_ , right? I had to. But I don’t remember.”

Kenma squeezes Shouyou. “It’s okay. You don’t have to remember.”

Shouyou goes lax against Kenma. When he speaks, his voice is dripped in a sadness that Kenma wants to take away. “But I want to. I want to remember.”

“I know,” Kenma replies. “I know.”

They stay tucked into each other until Kenma feels himself on the brink of sleep. It’s a hazy feeling, drowsiness. Kenma feels both incredibly heavy but also as if he’s floating. The almost-sleep is making his limbs freeze, but with enough concentration, Kenma is able to move them.

“Hey,” Kenma says. His voice is sleep-addled, gruff. But he clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, look at me.”

Shouyou pushes himself up a bit and looks at Kenma. He’s right above Kenma and Kenma can almost see through him. Almost.

“Kiss me.”

And so Shouyou does.

But Kenma doesn’t kiss him back. Instead he breathes into Shouyou’s mouth, filling up Shouyou with a gentle sort of magic. Shouyou freezes again, his eyes going pure milky white. But it’s only for a second, then Shouyou relaxes against Kenma. And then Kenma kisses him.

Shouyou doesn't have to worry about remembering anymore. 

Later, after Shouyou makes Kenma eat something and take a shower, and Kenma is clean and sated, the two of them lay down on Kenma’s bed. It’s Shouyou’s bed too, even if he can’t sleep. Like everything in Kenma’s life, it’s shared.

Kenma tangles their hands together and holds them above their bodies. Their hands fit perfectly and the sight makes Kenma fond. “Will you stay?” he asks. “Forever?”

Shouyou laughs. “Where else am I supposed to go?”

“That’s not an answer.” Kenma squeezes Shouyou’s hand even though he isn’t sure if Shouyou can even feel the pressure change.

Shouyou squeezes back. “Of course I will always stay with you. I love you.”

Kenma feels his face flush. He’s heard the words countless times before, but every time that Shouyou tells Kenma that he loves him, Kenma’s body reacts as if he is hearing it for the first time. It makes him giddy, knowing that Shouyou is his and he is Shouyou’s and they love each other very much.

Kenma rolls over to his side, facing Shouyou. Shouyou does the same. They lock eyes and share a smile.

“You mean so much to me,” Kenma says. “I can’t explain it. But I love you, too.”

Shouyou beams. He scooches over to Kenma and wraps his arms around him. “Me too. Me too.”

Kenma sleeps and he dreams of Shouyou: bright, beautiful, and his.

~

Kenma presses the knife deeper into his skin.

The blood appears as fast as a blink. One second, just pale skin. The next, a stream of hot, pulsing red. It spills over the sharp knife and over Kenma’s hands. Kenma knows what he’s doing: he has planned what he’s doing meticulously, right down to the angle that he would hold the knife.

But Kenma feels detached from it all. He’s the one holding Shouyou down, the one who had knocked him down with a curse and then tied him down so he had no chance of escaping. But he doesn’t feel himself do any of it. He’s just watching as his body goes through the movements.

“Kenma what are you doing?” Shouyou screams. His eyes are wide, dilated in fear. Kenma doesn’t answer, instead pushing the knife deeper into Shouyou’s throat. Shouyou screams and chokes on his blood.

Kenma had tried to knock him out, but Shouyou resisted. It was the one thing so far that hasn’t gone to plan. But Kenma can live with that. Somehow hearing Shouyou beg for his life is satisfying. Telling Kenma that he is doing a good job.

Kenma kneels back. He grimaces at the scene that the two of them make up: Kenma with bloody hands and a blank face. Shouyou with a cut-open neck and thrashing against his restraints. But no one is going to find them. This scene is for the two of them alone.

Shouyou bursts into tears. Kenma thinks he is beautiful, which is an odd thing to think at this moment. But Shouyou is always beautiful: he’s always been beautiful and just a bit out of Kenma’s reach. No matter what Kenma did, Shouyou was always a step or two ahead of him. Kenma could never catch up. And Shouyou never once realized that Kenma was trailing behind. He never stopped for him. Maybe if he did, things would be different.

But they aren’t.

This is what Shouyou gets for never looking back. They could have had a life together, but they didn’t. So Kenma is doing what needs to be done to get that life together. If Kenma can’t have Shouyou in life, then at least he’s going to make Shouyou his in death.

Shouyou’s cries begin to hurt Kenma’s ears.

“Why why why why?” Shouyou cries out, gurgling on his own blood. He hasn’t seemed to notice that the more he moves around, the more blood spills out. It’s not even that deep of a cut, but it gushes and stains his neck. The blood curls around his head, matting his hair. “Kenma you’re my best friend. Why are you doing this?”

Kenma doesn’t respond. Words have completely abandoned him. They left him in the minute he put his plan into action. This all started this morning: when Kenma unexpectedly showed up to Shouyou’s weekly, early morning hike. Shouyou always went on these alone and Kenma wasn’t an earlier riser. If anyone asked, Kuroo would say that Kenma was fast asleep on his couch. Shouyou wasn’t expected to meet up with anyone else for the next two days. Kenma had plenty of time to work with.

No one would ever think it was Kenma. Just Shouyou, gone in a freak accident on a dangerous hiking trail. It happened, sometimes. No one would find his body.

Kenma leans back over Shouyou until their faces are inches away from each other. Shouyou stops crying, but his bottom lip still trembles. Kenma cups Shouyou’s face and Shouyou winces at the touch.

Before Shouyou can react any more, Kenma swipes the knife across Shouyou’s neck once more. This time, it’s deep and blood squirts out and splashes against Kenma’s face. He stays over Shouyou, watching as Shouyou realizes what is going on, eyes almost bulging out of his face. Kenma expects him to cry out, shout, or even piss himself in fear. But Shouyou doesn’t. He stays completely silent, looking at Kenma with those wide eyes of his.

But then something must click in Shouyou’s head because then he starts to fight back. He lets out a yell that’s not really a yell with his cut vocal cords, just a deep sound full of terror. He struggles against the restraints. In his surprise, Kenma doesn’t move and Shouyou’s erratic movements make the knife clatter out of Kenma’s hand and onto the bloody floor.

Kenma doesn’t mind the blood. The smell and taste of iron is bland. What he does mind is Shouyou using the last of his energy to try and break free. What if Kenma had cut himself open? Then this whole thing would have been ruined. Everything must be precise.

Kenma always thought that Shouyou would take his death with dignity, with grace. He should have known this was coming. This is what he gets.

Shouyou continues to struggle until his energy depletes. He dies a slow death, his chest rising and falling with every breath that he takes in. He doesn’t want to die. Shouyou is holding onto every last piece of life that he can, but he’s already lost too much blood. It’s inevitable, his death.

Kenma watches every second of it. He sits in the middle of the blood, not caring that he’s going to have to burn these clothes, and watches Shouyou die. In his eyes, Kenma can see the questions that he is asking: why and how did this end up like this. But Kenma has no response. The fact that Shouyou doesn’t even know what he did wrong is one of the problems that this is all going to fix.

Shouyou takes in a ragged breath. Shouyou is pale, his features sunken in. Most of his face is covered with dried blood, and there is a steady trickle of blood coming out of the cut on his neck. His eyes squeeze together as if he’s crying, but his body has given up. There is nothing left in him.

Kenma blinks and Shouyou is standing in front of him, a skeleton of himself. His eyes are completely black, his hands covered in blood. The cut on his neck is bloodless, but the two flaps of skin move and say in a deep voice that doesn’t belong to Shouyou: “Kenma. I don’t want to die.”

Kenma blinks and Shouyou is laying down on the ground, restrained, and blood covering almost every inch of himself. He’s not moving. Not talking.

The blood on Kenma’s hands dries.

Shouyou dies.

Kenma cuts open his hand and lets his blood mix in with Shouyou’s.

The runes underneath his body explode in a flurry of colors. Kenma is not a necromancer, but if he’s done his research right, then Shouyou is not going anywhere. And Kenma had better done his research right. If Shouyou can’t love him in life, then Kenma is going to make sure that the same is not true in death.

Kenma burns.

Kenma leans down and kisses Shouyou’s still warm body. Then he stands up and looks around. It’s much too big of a mess for one person to clean up.

Kenma walks to a part of the ground that isn’t covered in blood and sits down. He takes out his phone. The dark screen reflects Kenma’s sweaty, blood-covered face. He feels triumphant and can’t help but smile at his reflection. His reflection smiles back at him, the expression wicked. He dials Kuroo’s number and tells him that he’s going to need help with something. Kenma leaves out the details, this isn’t even his phone and Kuroo is not answering from his phone either. They’re both too smart for that. But on the off chance that this phone gets chased down, keeping the conversation short and without details is a necessity.

Kuroo brings Yaku with him, just as planned. They arrive twenty minutes later.

Kenma stands up. The blood that is on him has dried in cakey flakes. When Kenma rubs his arm, it leaves a dusting of rust. Kenma looks at Shouyou and feels… something. A spark, something otherworldly that wasn’t there a moment ago.

Kenma breaks out into a grin.

Where there is an end, there is a beginning. And Kenma just forcibly closed one chapter of his life.

Time to start anew.

**Author's Note:**

> im on [twt](https://twitter.com/JINClTY) and [tumblr!](http://onceand-forall.tumblr.com/)


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